A source of mine shared what appears to me to be a real road map for Gemini.

It kicks off with Gemini wave 1.0, which includes the Blue metro-style/Windows Store complements to the core set of Office products -- namely, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. From what I've heard previously, these four apps will be more touch-centric and will work on Windows 8 and Windows RT. They will supplement, not replace, the desktop/Win32 versions of these apps that already exist. These apps will be made available to customers by October 2013, according to the purported road map.

The 1.5 wave of the Gemini updates is set for April 2014, the road map indicates. This is when the Office team will deliver the next version of Mac Office and an update to Office for Windows Phone. April 2014 also is listed as when Microsoft plans to make Office customized for LSX hardware. LSX offers a "large-screen experience," i.e., Perceptive Pixel large-screen, multitouch systems.

There's one other interesting projected milestone for April 2014: Office RT. I'm thinking this is a refresh of the desktop version of Word RT, Excel RT, PowerPoint RT, and OneNote RT -- the desktop versions of the current Office 2013 RT suite that Microsoft ported to ARM and bundled with Windows RT. I'm doubtful this will be other Office apps ported to Windows RT, even though one of my contacts claimed recently that the Office team already completed ports of most, if not all, of its Office apps to ARM.

Also on the road map for fall 2014 is what's listed as iOS/Android support for Office. One would assume this is the expected and widely rumored Office for iPad release. It could, however, be Office for iPhone and Android phones, given that it's not listed on the road map as being tablet-specific.

I do not know how old this purported road map is, but my contact indicated it was likely current as of the start of this year. I asked Microsoft Office to comment, but the company declined to do so.

"We don't have any information to share about the next set of updates to Office," a spokesperson said.

One last thing to keep in mind: Even when Microsoft commits to ship targets in road maps, things can and often do change. Demand (or lack thereof) can result in planned products releasing earlier or later than the planners anticipate.